


the chain you forged

by helloearthlings



Series: chain [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Companion Piece, Immortal Merlin, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 01:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1326160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything you do is for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the chain you forged

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to 'a chain linking us' - Very similar format, just Merlin's POV in this one. Hope you enjoy!

The past has a way of consuming you.

Your memories are beautiful and grandiose, the epitome of hope and joy, of a happiness long since faded to black, but they are tainted with grief and pain.

Your past is what created you, though, what binds you to the earth, the sea, the sky – you are the earth, the sea, and the sky, and you would never have known that if not for those fragments in your head.

Sometimes memories are all you can think of, all you can live, they are what you breathe. They give you your life, force oxygen into your lungs when all you want to do is quit, stop, end.

Everything you do is for him.

Everything.

He is the air that trickles through you, the blood that runs heavy and hot in your veins, the heartbeat in your chest that grows weaker with every passing second.

It doesn’t matter that he’s dead and gone, it doesn’t matter that you’re alone, have always been alone and always will be, no matter who you save, who you help, who you love – no matter where you exist, where you niche in the world is, if you are not with him, then you are alone.

But you’re living in the past, living with him and through him, because the past was when he was alive.

You have lived a thousand lifetimes, cared for a thousand souls, yet you yearn for him, across time and space and the endless distance between your heart and his.

Even if you stray far, far from Avalon, you keep him in the forethought of your mind at all times. You don't forget him, you can’t forget him – you won’t let yourself. You are the world has left of him, and you will make certain that he is remembered.

Soon after he died, you found the sigil that he gave you so very long ago, just before he was about to sacrifice his life for Camelot and you were about to sacrifice your life for his. It was his mother’s – he gave you something of hers, of the woman who had always meant the world to him even though he had never met her. It’s the greatest gift, at least of the physical variety, that he could have trusted you with.

You fashioned it into a necklace of sorts, and it hangs on a golden chain, usually hidden beneath your shirt, dangling there and pressing hard against your heart, reminding you where you belong and who you belong to. You go many places, but only one is home.

He is home.

You have not been home in such a long while.

You turn the charm in your hands from time to time, relishing in the feel of cool metal against your flesh, letting memory after memory wash over you, hoping they will eat you alive, devour you whole.

But of course, they never do. You can still picture them, though, picture him, and you suppose that is enough for now.

Before battle – battle of any sort, with swords clanging and spells flying, with pistols and rifles, with a few words of healing, with the world’s end only seconds away and you are the only one who can stop it from destroying what you hold dearest – you press the sigil to your lips, cradle it against you, and think of him, letting its golden chain push against your neck, half-strangling you and making sure you feel it, feel him.

You always do.

You keep yourself like this, in a world half in your head, filled with ghosts and a king who deserted you, half the earth, sea, and sky, human beings that you save, that you hold, that you love.

  
But whenever you can, you choose to lock yourself in a perpetual prison of memories, with his sigil choking you and forming you, because if you chain yourself to him, you will never, ever forget him.


End file.
